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Hi all, this is a very frequent topic of AH, I know. But many questions remain without an answer about the Able Archer 83, the Nato nuclear exercise that was misinterpreted by Soviets as a real attack-preparation in November 1983. Was it a real close-call for nuclear war?
Assume that it was. How the war could unfold? There are, at least, two possible courses of action in AH, if the Able Archer83 incident went wrong.
First: an all-out Soviet nuclear assault on Usa and Europe
Second: a limited Soviet nuclear assault on Germany and other Nato countries in Europe.
We have many indicators for both hypotesis.
All out nuclear strike:
During the Able Archer crisis all Soviet nuclear forces were put on high alert. Cia detected (posthumously) Soviet nuclear forces in Europe put on war footing. But the Strategic Rocket Forces, also, were alerted as witnessed by, at least, one ICBM Soviet officer, colonel Tkachenko
Soviet Northern Fleet was partially mobilized
An all-out nuclear attack on Us central system was consistent with two decades of Soviet military doctrine for war against the West
If you want to achieve a full victory, logically you have to destroy your main enemy (i.e.: Usa) before it could react
Limited nuclear strike:
During the Able Archer crisis, Moscow was not evacuated. Preventive evacuation of Moscow and other main Soviet cities and relocation of main industrial targets, were necessary in case of global thermonuclear war
Soviet boomers were not sent close to Us coasts; that move could have been necessary to achieve the surprise in a decapitating first strike
Soviet doctrine for war against the West was revised by marshall Nikolay Ogarkov, since the late 70s: he prescribed the least possible use of nukes in case of war. See the "Seven Days to the River Rhine" exercise (1979): even France and UK were not targeted
An all-out attack on Usa is a very risky (if not suicidal) business for Ussr. Andropov knew that a Us retaliation could have been inevitable and could have destroyed Soviet Union